Reddit's Ellen Pao warns 'trolls are winning the battle for the internet'

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Ellen Pao stepped down after controversial firing of Victoria Taylor
She has penned op-ed defending the move as essential restructuring
Describes her plight during 'one of the largest trolling attacks in history'
Warns 'the trolls are winning' but lists letters of support she received

Published: 16:08 EST, 16 July 2015 | Updated: 16:44 EST, 16 July 2015

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Ellen Pao has slammed her trolls after stepping down as interim CEO of Reddit.

The disgraced executive handed in her resignation last month after controversially firing communications director Victoria Taylor - provoking revolt among staff and loyal users.

A petition against Pao amassed 200,000 signatures.

Pao was forced to make a grovelling apology on the site in response. ‘We screwed up. Today, we acknowledge this long history of mistakes.’ But her words did little to quell either the surge of support for Taylor or the hostility towards Pao.

Breaking her silence on Thursday, Pao penned an op-ed in the Washington Post that uses military language to describe her experience as a 'battle' against 'one of the largest trolling attacks in history.'

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Bleak warning: Ellen Pao, who resigned as interim CEO of Reddit, warns bullies are taking over the internet

'The trolls are winning,' she warns.

She starts by explaining the reason for firing Taylor, who was best known for running Ask Me Anything. It was part of a large-scale restructuring of the communications department, she says, to protect Reddit executives from harassment and death threats.

Individual directors of the company came under ataack for restricting certain rights, such as the ability to upload revenge porn, or to harass individuals, Pao says.

'Reddit is the Internet,' she wrote, 'and it exhibits all the good, the bad and the ugly of the Internet. It has been fighting this harassment in the trenches.'

Senior figures in the tech industry were 'naive' to let internet users have free reign and believe it would have a positive outcome, she writes, citing statistics from Pew Research that show 40 per cent of internet users are bullied.

'We focused on the huge opportunity for positive interaction and information sharing. We did not understand how people could use it to harm others.

'The foundations of the Internet were laid on free expression, but the founders just did not understand how effective their creation would be for the coordination and amplification of harassing behavior.

She stepped down after controversially firing Victoria Taylor, the celebrated communications director

Victoria Taylor before sacking talks about Reddit in 2013

'Or that the users who were the biggest bullies would be rewarded with attention for their behavior.

'Or that young people would come to see this bullying as the norm — as something to emulate in an effort to one-up each other.'

The overall tone of the op-ed is bleak.

'No one has figured out the best place to draw the line between bad and ugly — or whether that line can support a viable business model,' Pao writes in a damning suggestion that Reddit will sink without her.

But ends by listing the messages of condolence she received in recent weeks.

Some told her to 'stay safe', others reminded her 'you are human', and some were allegedly even 'reformed' trolls writing in to apologize.

She concludes: 'In the battle for the Internet, the power of humanity to overcome hate gives me hope. I’m rooting for the humans over the trolls. I know we can win.'